Feed My Sheep

Seven disciples go fishing on the Sea of Galilee and catch nothing all night — until a stranger on the shore tells them to cast their net on the other side, and it comes up so full they can barely haul it in. John recognizes Him first: “It is the Lord!” — and Peter, without hesitation, jumps straight into the water to get to Him faster than the boat could carry him. On shore, Jesus already has bread and fish cooking over a charcoal fire. He doesn’t need their catch to feed them; He simply invites them into what He’s already prepared: “Come and dine.” It’s a small, quiet scene, and it’s also unmistakably deliberate — another charcoal fire, echoing the one Peter stood beside three times denying he knew Jesus at all.

After breakfast, Jesus asks Peter the same question three times — “Do you love Me?” — matching, one for one, Peter’s three denials. Each time Peter answers, Jesus responds not with a lecture about his failure but with a commission: “Feed My lambs. Tend My sheep. Feed My sheep.” There’s no condemnation in the exchange, only restoration. Peter’s past failure doesn’t disqualify him from future ministry — it becomes the very soil that ministry grows from. Jesus even tells Peter plainly that he’ll one day die for his faith, and then gives him the same two words He gave him at the very beginning, back on this same shore: “Follow Me.” The Gospel that opened with John the Baptist pointing to the Lamb of God closes with an ordinary fisherman, freshly forgiven, being handed a shepherd’s task — and with John's own testimony that everything written here is true, though the world itself couldn’t contain all there was to tell.